


Bring Home to Family

by DarkPoisonousLove



Category: Winx Club
Genre: Anniversary, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Kissing, Light Angst, Married Couple, Married Life, Pre-Canon, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkPoisonousLove/pseuds/DarkPoisonousLove
Summary: Being parents bleeds new colors into a typical wedding anniversary for Erendor and Samara when confessions start pouring in the newly established change in their relationship. Having a fuller family to look after elicits promises neither of them would have thought they'd have the occasion or the desire to make.
Relationships: Erendor/Samara (Winx Club)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Bring Home to Family

**Author's Note:**

> When am I gonna learn that looking at prompts/writing memes/anything that can spawn writing is not a good idea? Until then have this.

Erendor emerged from the walk-in closet to his bedchamber still swallowed in darkness that allowed almost no shadow to form behind Samara whose silhouette was just barely outlined in his private space by the meek moonlight finding its way into the room through the thick clouds suffocating the night sky. She hadn’t gotten the lights upon entering only to give the spotlight to the reaction of his pulse towards the opening door, announcing her arrival.

She’d fallen behind after dinner to stop by the nursery and check up on Sky who was settling in his new home–after only a couple of months–better than she was in yet another year of marriage. He hadn’t fallen for her attempts to hide it despite her kept promise to come find him after soothing her own worries. The warmth of the late spring evening made the air of distance around her tangible like it wasn’t even as she was occupied with the vast uncertainty of the future to slip away from the now.

She hadn’t reacted to his presence yet in spite of her habit of waking up at the slightest shift in the mattress that was rarely him leaving bed and just seeking the comfort to fall back asleep. He could have thought she was looking back on their wedding night or the more relaxed and enjoyed anniversaries that had followed if she weren’t facing the window, her mind not with him. It was somewhere out there chasing something he couldn’t see while she twisted and twirled the ring around her finger.

That was her usual state – observing the details that slipped his notice and considering what he wouldn’t have caught on to even if his life depended on it. The ring fiddling was new though. She never drew anyone’s attention to all the gold adorning her fingers when it spoke of itself. She never drew her own attention to the lack of a wedding band that separated her from all her ladies-in-waiting. She was the queen and that was what they all had to remember – as stated by the shining crown on her head.

The crown was given a rest now, though, his own keeping it company in the safe in his closet to leave him with just Samara. His wife.

“What’s wrong with you?” He approached slowly, his voice already startling enough to trigger her defense mechanisms as it dragged her out of her own thoughts to where he demanded her attention. Sometimes there was no other way than brute force to draw her out on common ground, though. She’d just stay behind her own eyes where his gaze didn’t dare poke, unreadable stillness falling over her as if merging with the trap her mind had become made it bearable to remain caught inside.

A tilt of her head in the direction of his words threatened to be the only acknowledgement he received before she stepped aside to free the space she’d just occupied for him. “I thought I’d get used to this by now,” she let her voice keep his company even if it was just above a whisper – as if to prove to them both that she wasn’t forcing it out against her will. “Our marriage.” Her hands dropped at her sides slowly to attract no interest in the action when the rest of her was a more alluring sight. “It’s still so... new,” she still grasped at all the time he gave her just for the little word.

She always found the right thing to say, only, it was usually right there on the tip of her tongue. This speech– _confession_ –was coming from the deep, from the pit of her stomach or from her heart maybe. Dread was not something he’d seen on her to be able to tell if that was what had wrapped her up like she was an anniversary surprise herself or if they could both relax in the wake of the words.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been so long... or that it has all been... real.” Her voice had that who-would-have-thought lilt to it that could have shaken his ego to the core if it hadn’t been her own mind bleeding on her the reality of their union. The reality she’d met all their other anniversaries in.

“You’re thinking about the wedding you wanted?” Any other girl her age would have gotten hearts and flowers, piles of presents and a loving marriage. Instead she’d carried Eraklyon’s Spine down a path of almost thousand steps–something they had in common, except she’d had to get through the mosaic his own reign had added to the splendid display of the kingdom’s history–and hadn’t bowed under the burden of the metal contraption on her back even while accepting the weight of the crown on her head. She’d passed the test of her will and decorum only to get none of the following ceremonies in her honor.

Her coronation had been compressed to just the essentials leaving her with all the duty and not even a touch of the glamor of the title of queen. Despite the royal bearings of the event, the two of them could have found a better balance between the appearances the ruling couple had to keep and the experiences any newlywed had the right to if it hadn’t been for her mother’s meddling. Though, meddling would imply that she had only inserted herself in their process when, in reality, she’d been the one who had orchestrated the whole thing.

Samara looked back to the darkness outside as if to decipher its secret of hiding the stars. Some of the light they would have shed on the palace had the sky been clear could have headed towards them years ago on a night during which he hadn’t been a part of her life and she had had the opportunity to design her own life she hadn’t devoted to the monarchy. It would have stung him to ward him off regardless of the weakness of being worn out by all that space it had traveled through by virtue of not coming from Eraklyon’s sun. But the sky was covered by a curtain blocking it out from interfering to leave them alone in the quiet room where he could hear every one of her breaths and follow all the movements of her lips and her chest.

“There was never a wedding I wanted,” Samara admitted, her rigid tone too familiar to be the voice of her wariness after she’d been nothing but a warrior queen, skilled beyond belief on the field of political intrigues. And in private she had shed the armor in which she’d secured every single one of her thoughts to protect them from even the strongest of blood magic.

His time for dreams had been crushed by the burden of fortifying the monarchy his parents had pushed on his head with little regard to his young age that could have collapsed under the weight of such monstrous responsibility as carrying the tradition of the dragon-taming kingdom. Samara, on the other hand, hadn’t had permission to imagine her own future in a way that served her and no one else with her mother’s ambitions strapped to her back to force on her the resilience to uphold Eraklyon’s Spine. Even without him in her life, she would have never clawed out of her mother’s iron fist the freedom to choose her own husband just like he hadn’t had the power to choose his wife even though he’d carried the title of king from the ripe age of eighteen.

He’d looked for an ally, not for a woman to be happy with. He’d been looking for her family's influence to keep his face from smashing in the ground under the neck-breaking value of the ancient piece on his head, not for the soothing support of her touch on his arm after a night of restless sleep.

His whole attention was on her to leave for him the tangible awareness that she could sense the insistent presence of his gaze on the outside of her dress. “But now there is?” He’d taken her hand to lead her into the palace and slip a crown on her head regardless of the circumstances and their feelings on the matter and it had changed the heart of Eraklyon to have a woman like her sitting on the throne beside him.

She caught his eye, her irises illuminated like the sun was within reach by the surprise of him having gathered her words in his palm to sift through them in search of the real shine amidst the fool’s gold. He could never raise a hand to shield his eyes from the shining wonder in hers that was both praise and gratitude. She held him upright as long as he held her. And she let herself go as he pulled her into his arms despite the rarity of the gesture. Everything did feel new anyway, not just in her mind, but in the space between them, too.

Samara bowed, pressing her forehead against his chest to leave only the crown of her head visible to him. It would have been a genius strategy of keeping him in the dark about the audience in her mind if not for the quiet words framing her honesty as a picture he would devote the whole palace to storing if it could offer the privacy of both their liking.

“We never really...” she ran a hand through her hair as if looking for a thread to tie her thought together. Or a ribbon to hold her in one complete package like a neatly wrapped gift in a box but she was no gift. That would imply she was an inanimate object and the idea was a slap in the face no physical entity would have allowed itself after all the gifts she’d given him and the whole kingdom.

He might have called her a blessing if he had belief in a higher force but the crown was the tallest institution he had seen. It would prickle anything looming over his head to repel the threat and leave his hand free to place on her shoulder instead of clutching at the hilt of a sword even with the blood covering it.

“We never truly committed to each other,” Samara raised her head to hold his gaze, her voice just loud enough for him not to strain to hear it as all the strength had retreated into her straight spine. “We just signed our separate existence away.” And had sworn their efforts in service of the stagnant land of their home.

“We had our own agreement.” He hadn’t laid with the serpent’s offspring on their wedding night like he’d feared. She’d been so soft in his hands, every movement delicate like glass, including her breathing. Had she trusted him, it would’ve been an invitation to lay his head on her chest and listen to the honest cipher of her heart which he would’ve taken and let her snap his neck with an unnatural motion he’d caused in the rhythm of her existence had he trusted her.

It had been a mutually beneficial alliance that had kept her vulnerability in his eyes. Now she was covered in edges and tearing herself away from his embrace he had to loosen if he didn’t want his pain poked in under his skin.

“We made a deal that was in its essence each of us hoping the trust we agreed to wouldn’t blow up in our faces,” she’d already put half a room between them to give the impact space to dissipate.

She was right. He’d only truly believed she was on his side and not ambushing him from the shadows to stab him in the back once her family had been out of the reach of their own influence as they’d fled from the relentless hunt for her inheritance Samara had set out on. And she hadn’t had the comfort of the same reassurance on his territory with his will bearing down on her neck. She had only settled in the pull between them after he hadn’t let her drown in the realization of her infertility. And she’d paid the price of needing the security of his arms around her in the first place.

He couldn’t reach for her with the reminder of that so he had to broach the topic from the angle she’d chosen. “Since then every day has been a promise of sorts.” Conviction escaped him through the haze of worry wrapped around him in a barrier to keep away from her anything that could assault her with the disbelief it caused.

Samara stopped in front of the mirror on the wall to give voice to the truth in her reflection. There was barely a movement in her, her head lowered as she waited for him to lift her chin – either with a gentle touch or with the indignation he’d trigger if he stepped over a line.

“We promised each other trust and we’ve kept our word all this time,” he tried staying put, away from her. It had never been physical distance he’d had to overcome to reach her and that hadn’t changed amidst the evolution of their marriage. “Year after year to make it to yet another celebration,” she had a great touch for those making them all unforgettable in his mind unlike the events marking his reign. Before her, that was. “Another anniversary.” He could never forget what their marriage carried to maintain the monarchy, the secret only she could understand weighing his conscience but holding his heart tied to hers by an invisible string, red like blood.

Samara ran a finger over the necklace he’d given her that now lay undisturbed by her touch on the table. She’d let him fasten it around her neck despite their marriage having started out as a noose over her life pulling her in a bigger gilded cage. She’d worn it through dinner in the garden where their privacy hadn’t been breached with all the preparations in place before asking him to take it off to save it for a grand reveal during an official event.

She’d coined a little tradition for herself soon after the wedding–though, it had taken him a lot longer to notice–of wearing her favorite jewelry for her least favorite public appearances to strike a balance that wouldn’t shake her in front of prying eyes. Only him she’d initiated to her secret by not finding the need to conceal the relief the jewelry locked around her. As if the different pieces were all protective charms that warded off intrusions upon her thoughts.

If she was reaching for his presence coating the necklace, then he hadn’t grounded her in the trust between them she needed to bare her mind. “Do you know what my first impression of you was?” he asked because she didn’t want pretty words–that was what all the jewelry was for–only real ones. And because it was one of the few things he hadn’t trusted himself to confess yet.

He’d told her how tongue-tied his fear of her reading him like an open book had rendered him or how his mindfulness of her charm had filtered out the beauty from the appearance of any other woman. He’d told her about the distraction his admiration for her political knowledge and strategizing had brought him. He’d even told her about the attentiveness–almost frantically intense–she’d lured out to crush his arrogance with on their wedding night.

He’d never told her about _that_ night, though. Their first meeting over dinner at her family’s estate. That could stand to change after the recent development of their relationship.

“I thought that you would make me stop drinking.”

Her eyebrows furrowed–far from subtly–as if to hold the confusion from collapsing on her. “How come?” She trusted him enough now not only to let it show, but to let him lift it off her shoulders too.

“I thought that if you poisoned me through the wine, no one would be the wiser.” The crumbling of his facade sent her freezing like a statue waiting for the smallest of movements to doom her to the same. “Your mother would have found a way to keep the throne even in the event of my death.” The monarchy had needed just so much to topple over but someone with her mother’s cunning would have used the impact to push his lineage off the seat of power and cement herself there, and her family.

Samara’s hand fell heavily on top of the nacre drop plated in massive gold he’d picked for her as if trying to crush it. All she accomplished was having it digging in the soft flesh of her palm which may as well have been the intention. Her planned movements were estimated to precision and the ones that didn’t fit that criteria were shaped by his presence in reflection of his own actions.

“I thought you’d be the end of me,” the words spilled with ease luring from her tears or blood to join them but the trust she’d placed in him held them back for the price of being given away. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.” It echoed back at her through the empty chamber to fill it.

She turned to him to allow him to approach her now that he wouldn’t be sneaking up on her. She didn’t say anything but her eyes followed him as he poured a glass of wine from the open bottle–he hadn’t drank it but had prepared for the inevitability of giving into the temptation–on the table. She had gifted it to him – made from a rare sort of grapes cultivated with the warmth of dragon fire in the colder climate of the north for a perfect balance of the acidity and freshness of the flavor – his favorite. She’d gotten every detail right even if she hardly ever joined him for a drink.

“To beginnings,” he raised the glass just above the level of her lips. He could climb on the roof of the palace to take it higher than anything else in the kingdom but her eyes were locked with his and he couldn’t risk pulling them out with a symbolic act he couldn’t follow through. “To the start of our life together, another year of marriage and being parents.”

It was all beginnings with her and building their own fate. They’d given each other the chance to raise a son together and bring new life to their world. All thanks to her freeing them both from the distrust that would’ve been planted between them like a hedge of thorns to separate them if she hadn’t taken his proposition of unity. She had been right – they’d signed away their separate existence. He could do so much as commit to her outside the reach of the crown.

“To you.” He lifted the glass to his lips to drink, his eyes never closing as they maintained the contact with her to render all else null and void. It wasn’t about the wine or the celebration. He hadn’t even caught the flavor of the liquid washing down his throat and the crown–both of them–could have started banging on the inside of the safe in a desperate attempt at drawing his loyalty that he wouldn’t have cared for.

It was all about her. About them. About the trust he gave her willingly and not through necessity.

Samara slipped the glass from his fingers before he’d even drawn in a breath to take a sip from it. A long gulp of wine that almost drained the whole glass to have her eyelids closing. A risk she never took to avoid the look of glazed over eyes and the lack of control over slurred speech. Alcohol dulled all her weapons against the world but she took part in the toast he made for them.

“To you,” she looked at him to distinguish the anniversary from their wedding night that had been a shaky start to a foundation they built upon each year to find themselves on new territory. Territory he could guide them through if he listened to her directions.

“To us.”

Her mouth found his to leave no need for a shift between them to accommodate their new stance. They’d drunk the same wine and eaten the same food, even had the red of heat burning in their cheeks and creeping up their necks as witnessed by the mirror. They were one whole even though their union hadn’t been forged by blood.

It was forged in trust redder than the ruby on her finger, redder than the wine on their breaths, redder than all the hurt he’d lived through. It almost resembled the color of her lipstick she smeared over his lips as she kissed him, except it was redder than that too. It was deeper and not necessarily darker even as it came from the very bottom of their hearts where it had been pushed by the weight on their heads.


End file.
